Military

The images of executions of alleged collaborators in Gaza and the bullet-ridden bodies left behind in Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are the end of a story, not the beginning. They are the result of years, at times decades, of the random violence, brutal repression and collective humiliation the United States has inflicted on others.

The current leaders of the world, whether leaders of democratic or socialist governments or leaders of ‘extremist’ groups, have the same simplistic responses to wars, to the global refugee crises, and even to antiwar protesters: spying and surveillance, imprison, shoot and bombard, or Hillary Clinton’s slogan in Afghanistan to ‘fight, talk, build’!

The US’ military-industrial complex is so huge that many now depend on war for profit. And as the US war with Afghanistan winds down, and its people not wanting to go back to Iraq, the US now faces a problem: it needs a war. So who should it go to war with? The marketing machines have started to turn once again, with politicians and the media spewing more lies and propaganda to sell America on a new war. Who will the lucky country be? The Resident discusses.

Australia is now more deeply embedded strategically and militarily in US global military planning, especially in Asia, than ever before…“The Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap outside Alice Springs remains the most important US intelligence base outside the US itself.”

Many have accused Jon Stewart of being pro-Hamas for expressing sympathy for the residents of Gaza, where more than 500 people have been killed — including at least 100 children — in recent fighting with Israel. A comedic view of a common American reaction to questioning Israel’s military tactics.

We know we cannot “save” people by killing them; we cannot “save” villages in Afghanistan or cities in Iraq or the country of Syria by destroying them. Demand that fighting—all combat and all financial support and intervention by foreign troops in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan—stop. Demand an end to all of it. It’s time for all of us to demand an end to war.

For the United States, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be over soon. We will leave behind, after our defeats, wreckage and death, the contagion of violence and hatred, unending grief, and millions of children who were brutalized and robbed of their childhood.

Now that the U.S. government has released parts of its We-Can-Kill-People-With-Drones memo, it’s hard to miss why it was kept secret until now. The memo’s author, needed a loophole to make murder-by-missile a lawful killing rather than an unlawful killing, so he pulls out the “public authority justification” under which the government gets to use force to enforce a law. It’s a novel twist, though, for the government to get to use force to violate the law, claiming the violation is legal on the Nixonian basis that it is the government doing it.

The US on Monday released the secretive memo outlining the Obama administration’s legal justifications for targeted-killings of American citizens by drone strike. Used to justify the killing of American born Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011, a federal judge ordered the declassification of the memo after the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times brought a lawsuit against the government. RT’s Manila Chan has more on the long-sought release of the document. ﻿

Iraq is descending into chaos, but not for the reasons you’re being fed by the politicians and the mainstream media. The public must come to terms with the fact that the current chaos is directly related to a half century of US military interventions and covert operations in the middle east. Bombing for peace never has, and never will, work.

Ron Paul: Because of the government’s foolish policy of foreign interventionism, the U.S. is faced with two equally stupid choices: either pour in resources to prop up an Iraqi government that is a close ally with Iran, or throw our support in with al-Qaeda in Iraq (as we have done in Syria). I say we must follow a third choice: ally with the American people and spend not one more dollar or one more life attempting to re-make the Middle East. Haven’t we have already done enough damage?

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